by SOW
“Is that okay?”
In a voice with no emotion, Rebecca responded with a question.
Only a few in the military knew about the development of humanoid Hunter Units. Even Sophia, the leader of the security guards, didn’t know the details. Furthermore, because Daian falsified reports and pretended the Hunter Units were still under development, no one in the regular military knew that the project had succeeded long ago, even though it was footing the bill.
“It’s impossible to break through the Schutzstaffel forces without immediately attracting attention. It will reveal who I am, and you will lose your position.”
“Oh well. So they scold me.”
This would certainly result in more than a mere scolding. Daian would face the gravest charge of deceiving the nation. He would face arrest, detainment, and then execution by firing squad.
“But Elvin is a smart guy, so he wouldn’t kill me. At least not for now.”
Daian’s brain was precious to Wiltia. The nation had signed an agreement with the Billions Trading Company and requested financial backing to support Daian’s research.
“Besides, if we act right away, we can weaken the Schutzstaffel. After all, it’s not impossible to destroy them.”
With the proper request from the development bureau, the regular military would be able to enter the royal capital. Moreover, they could attack the Schutzstaffel with a compulsory criminal investigation, much like the Schutzstaffel’s current attack on the development bureau.
In this world, being nice wasn’t enough to run an organization. If they pushed hard, they could expel as many people from positions of power as they wanted, even affecting the big nobles who were Genitz’s patrons.
“Genitz is not a man who underestimates such matters. Elvin is intelligent in that respect, too.”
Daian knew that Elvin would understand the point Daian was making. Furthermore, the development of humanoid Hunter Units was an absolute secret, but by revealing it, Daian could hide his true purpose, which was hidden underneath. Pulling this veil aside would be a heavy blow, but it wouldn’t be fatal.
“Understood. I’m going now.”
“Yes, please see to this immediately.”
Daian then spoke further, as if remembering something, and Rebecca turned around.
“I still have a bad feeling about this. I don’t want Sophia to die.”
Sophia was a precious amusement for Daian. She was like a favorite tea or beloved brand of cigarettes. She provided just the right amount of stimulation to sharpen his thoughts. It would be vexing to lose her.
“Understood.”
Rebecca didn’t appear to take note of his words. She narrowed her eyes slightly, bowed once, and left the room.
“Hurry! Move that thing outta the way right now!”
“Medics! Where are the medics?!”
“It’s no use! He’s beyond help!”
For security reasons, entry to the area around Daian’s office was forbidden to anyone but select staff members. Tonight, guards retreating from the furious fighting were nearby.
“Under the developer’s authority, restrict total capacity to 75 percent and release limiter!”
Unworried, Rebecca spoke quietly, as if casting a magic spell.
“Huh? Hey, you! How did you get in here?!”
One of the security guards noticed her.
“... drei... zwei... eins...”
Rebecca didn’t answer. She continued preparing for her next action.
“It’s dangerous here! Come this way!”
A soldier ran to her, but the moment he raised a hand toward her shoulder...
“... nulllll!”
Rebecca’s red eyes glowed and she disappeared.
“Huh?!”
The soldier stood in shock, incapable of understanding what just happened. There was no way he could understand it. The mechanical girl in human form had moved with a speed that exceeded human comprehension.
The fall of the Hessen family had accelerated as science advanced, resulting in improved weapons and altered battlefields. Finally, thirty years ago, its fall became certain when cavalries disappeared in the face of machine guns, cannons, and tanks.
The warrior family, finding itself without a role on the field of battle, had tried to restore itself. In the end, Klemens von Hessen took a wife, based on her good family name, and married the daughter of an upstanding family that had actually fallen farther than the Hessens. Hessen believed that if he mixed with noble blood, the resulting child was sure to restore the family, and he clung to the hope of preserving the family’s venerable status to the very end.
However, when the baby was born, he was disappointed for two reasons. First, the baby was a girl. In a warrior family, a girl could not carry on the family. Secondly, the baby had black hair and black eyes.
“How awful! This is a black dog!!”
That baby girl was Hildegard von Hessen, whose father rejected her, even before holding her, smiling at her, or giving her a name.
Wiltians often had blond hair and blue eyes, but not everyone had those features. Wiltia was continental, so its people intermingled with other ethnic groups. Even pure Wiltians often had red or black hair. The reality was that less than half the population had blond hair and blue eyes.
Among the noble class, however, about 80 percent had those characteristics, because all the royal families from Luftzand Domain, the earlier Holy Empire, and the European Empire a thousand years ago, had blond hair. This background meant that, almost as an article of faith, nobles were proud of the color of their hair and eyes. It had always been that way.
Still, this didn’t mean that people who were not blond and blue-eyed experienced open discrimination. A family with black hair across generations could, if descended from an old, noble people, maintain pride in its history. However, it was a different story if a long-standing blond-haired family suddenly produced a child with black hair.
Before the Principality of Wiltia was established seven hundred years ago, the continent of Europea had faced what was called the Dark Age, a time of war, poverty, starvation, and epidemic. The nations that now ruled 70 percent of the world were extremely weak back then, and were overrun by barbarians attacking from the east. Anyone who fought the invaders met death, while those who surrendered kept their lives, but the men and children became slaves, and the women were violated.
The barbarians rampaging across the continent retreated after a counterattack by the allied forces of the nations of Europea. All that remained, however, was devastation, with mountains of corpses, and women who had conceived unwanted children, fathered by the barbarians.
The women were frightened. What kind of discrimination would their children face if they were born with black hair and eyes like those of the barbarians? However, the children born ten months later had blond hair.
The women were pleased that the physical characteristics of the barbarians weren’t apparent in their children. At least not yet.
But years later, that generation’s grandchildren were born with black hair and eyes. The time it took for those characteristics to emerge differed from bloodline to bloodline, but once every few generations babies with dark eyes and hair appeared, as if a reminder of the distant past when barbarians had defeated their people.
Children with black hair were mocked as the children of losers and as “black dogs.” They were held in contempt as the descendants of shameless mothers who had begged the barbarians for forgiveness in exchange for their bodies.
“What a shocking story...”
After listening to Hilde’s background, as they sat in the chapel, Marlene’s heart was filled with horror.
Not about Hilde’s background. She was appalled by the people who irrationally discriminated against children as barbarians and losers because of what had happened seven centuries earlier.
“I don’t like to criticize anyone’s parents, but your father was wrong.”
“I don’t blame y
ou for saying that.”
Hilde’s father was a man who could only feel secure in his identity through “venerable blood.” Aside from that venerable blood, he wasn’t particularly talented and thought it was shameful for nobles to work. It had been Hilde’s mother who covered the Hessen family’s living expenses by working.
“My father wanted to kill me when he saw my hair and eyes. Or he wanted to leave me at the poorhouse.”
However, Hilde’s mother had tearfully begged him, kneeling on the ground, to raise Hilde as their child.
“My mother became his slave in exchange for my life. She never disagreed with him and single-mindedly devoted herself to him.”
“Um, if you were born into such a household, then why do you still...”
Marlene couldn’t understand. Hilde had suffered because of the narrow-minded prejudice of her noble father, but she was still obsessed with her family’s blood. She might have left such a father and sought a different way of life.
“Have you ever heard of the Polpora?”
“Huh? Isn’t that a kind of fairy in folk tales?”
Marlene put her finger to her mouth as she recalled a children’s book that she read to the children.
“Yes. They secretly steal beautiful treasures from humans.”
Ugly Polpora fairies were fond of anything pretty. To adorn themselves, they stole lovely objects and left ugly ones in their place.
“If they see a pretty dress, they replace it with a soiled cloth. If they see a shiny jewel, they replace it with a dirty rock. And if they see a beautiful baby, they replace it with their own unsightly infant.”
“Hold on a second. You...”
“My father told me I was a child of the Polpora.”
Hessen didn’t think Hilde was his own child. He was from an honorable, lofty family, so his own child couldn’t possibly be a black dog. He insisted that his real, beautiful baby was stolen and a grotesque Polpora baby had been left in its place.
“Urgh!”
Marlene was at a loss for words.
Many suffer discrimination because of their birth. Milly and Jacob also suffered because of their pasts and their families. Nonetheless, there were actions that were totally unacceptable for parents to do to their children.
“Even as my mother died, she apologized for giving birth to me.”
Why had she apologized? Was it for not giving Hilde the blonde hair and blue eyes that her father wanted? Or for not immediately killing a black dog with black hair and eyes?
“So I swore to myself... for my mother’s sake... that I would become a fine noble and restore the family.”
“Maybe... that was wrong?”
Marlene had once agreed to be a terrorist, but for most of her life, she was a common citizen. She didn’t understand the way nobles thought. But she wondered.
“No, it wasn’t wrong! It was... just what I thought.”
Even if she was a black dog, Hilde believed that she could succeed as a noble and get back at her father and others who despised her. She lived her life with no other goal. However, she had always questioned that way of life.
“I finally understood that my mother was apologizing to me for bringing me into a noble family.”
In the end, even if Hilde achieved the highest honors, she wouldn’t be the person she wanted to be. Hurting someone who had hurt her wouldn’t help. She might grow rich and she might attain power. But, Hilde wouldn’t know what to do with vast riches and influence.
“Marlene, it was you who made me think differently.”
“What? Me?”
Marlene was surprised to find herself in Hilde’s story.
“Yes.”
Marlene had tried to kill Lud. In that sense, she was like Hilde. Furthermore, Hilde wasn’t even able to scratch Lud, whereas Marlene had achieved results.
“You gave up on killing Lud Langart, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I will never again try to kill him.”
Marlene deeply regretted that, while a nun, she had betrayed the children at the orphanage by acting as a terrorist. She thought that she no longer had the right to live with Milly and the other children at the church. However, Lud had convinced her...
“If you regret it, then as long as they live, make them believe that you’re just a nun.”
Living with that would be harder than dying or imprisonment. Nonetheless, Marlene made that choice and was alive today. There was no reason for a nun to kill. She was incapable of such a thing.
“Well, that’s not the only reason.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, nothing.”
The other reason was that she had fallen in love with the person she had tried to kill.
“Anyway, at least you can laugh about it now. I’ve never smiled that way.”
When Hilde looked down on someone, when she trampled someone underfoot, she wore a hateful smile. However, in her fifteen years of life, she had no memory of smiling from the bottom of her heart.
Being able to smile meant that she was over her past.
The people she met in Organbaelz all had overcome their pasts in order to smile in the present. Hilde finally realized that. What she really wanted was to feel pleasure in the present. She wanted to feel that she belonged in the world.
Hilde was always irritated because she couldn’t have that. She was irritated because she was worried, and her worry was actually deep fear. Her own father had cast her out, so she doubted whether she should even exist in this world.
“No, surely you too have something. Something you like... Something you like to do?”
“Something I...”
After Marlene asked the question, Hilde paused.
“Come to think of it, there was one thing.”
When she was young, she had liked something. Since her family was poor and Hilde had received little love from her parents, she never received many toys. But there was one thing she had enjoyed, which she could do without money or possessions.
“I liked to sing.”
Hilde’s mother was also from a fallen noble family. She sometimes sang in bars for daily wages.
When Hilde was young, she learned a few songs, and her mother had lavished her with praise. Even her father, who rarely showed interest in her, had praised her singing. But that led to another tragic experience.
“Singing? You like to sing? Are you any good?”
“W-Well, kind of...”
Suddenly, Marlene’s eyes had taken on a different look. She was excited as she grabbed Hilde’s shoulders and made a request as if she was pleading.
“Could you sing a little?”
“What? That would be embarrassing! Besides, I haven’t sang in a while, so I don’t feel confident.”
“Don’t worry! I’m the only person here! Give it a go!”
Usually, Hilde’s hot temper would have taken over, and she would have knocked Marlene away, shouting, “Shut up!” But she was feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable and the look on Marlene’s face was too intense to refuse.
“Okay, but don’t laugh.”
She had no choice but to try a song from her old repertoire. Hilde coughed a few times and readied her throat.
It’s been so long since I last sang...
She remembered that day when her father made her attend a ball, wearing a rented dress, so she could use her singing voice to catch the eyes of a big noble.
She never sang again after that day. She avoided even humming since the moment she returned from the ball in dejection, and her father had hit her over and over.
However, today, she set aside her resolution.
“Ahh...”
She took a deep breath and sang. The song, which she had learned from her mother years ago, was about an old nation.
God fell in love with a girl and sent her all manner of gifts.
A jewel that shone more splendidly than the light of a star... A rose made of gold... A dress woven of the light of the sky...
He gave
her everything, but she did not respond.
She was already in love with someone else.
She loved a poor shepherd.
The girl didn’t love God, with his omnipotence, immortality, and beauty that surpassed everything else in the world. God wept in sorrow, and sank into despondent depths.
Light disappeared from the world, trees wasted away, rivers and oceans ran dry, and life faded from the land.
The world was dying, so a frightened servant of God devised a plan.
The poor shepherd must die.
The shepherd met his death because he was loved by the girl.
He was accused, pushed from a cliff, and he died.
And yet, the girl still did not answer God.
She followed the shepherd, throwing herself off the cliff.
God raged at his servant for this thoughtless action.
He cast thunderbolts and made untold mountains spew fire.
He divided his life in two, giving one part to the girl and the other to the shepherd, so that they might live once again.
God’s life was over and he fell into a deep slumber.
The sun rose again over the world.
The girl and the shepherd rose and the world revived...
... little by little.
“Phew...”
After she finished the song, sweat shone on Hilde’s forehead. She sighed deeply and turned around as if just remembering something.
In her embarrassment, she had turned away from Marlene, and sang facing a holy symbol hanging in the chapel, as if to consecrate it.
“Um, what’s the matter?”
Marlene was looking at her in amazement.
“You’re really good!”
She sighed in admiration as she spoke with heartfelt surprise.
“Wow... Are you really in the military? I can’t believe it!”
Hilde sang like a professional singer. No, she was so good that an average singer would skulk away in shame.
Marlene didn’t know a lot about singing. Nonetheless, she could tell that Hilde’s voice was uncommonly beautiful. Few singers in Berun, the royal capital of Wiltia, or in the grand theaters of Parise, the City of Art, could sing as well.